Welcome to the Piano World Piano ForumsOver 2.5 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

I've been trying to figure out how this piano sound was obtained: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCl-0lu0vHM (it's Richard Clayderman so if that bothers you, oh well). It has a very sharp attack, but after the sustained notes sounds softer (and the sustain doesn't last long). I think it's a Yamaha he's playing?

Did they achieve that sound by making the hammers hard? Is it just how Yamahas sounded at the time of the recording? Is it something they did with the microphones to make it seem like the sustain didn't last long?

Have you thought that it must be a recording or even a rerecording problem?

I don't think it's a 'problem', I'm pretty sure they were going for that sound. The advantage of that sound is that the melody line is clear and understandable when recorded, even when projected from low quality mono-speakers through an open-air market in a third world country.

Have you thought that it must be a recording or even a rerecording problem?

I don't think it's a 'problem', I'm pretty sure they were going for that sound. The advantage of that sound is that the melody line is clear and understandable when recorded, even when projected from low quality mono-speakers through an open-air market in a third world country.

Just curious if you think they were also going for the hum (DC offset) that's most noticeable at the end? To me the hum indicates they weren't all that interested in pristine quality. may be the video was made for Youtube, but Youtube's compression only makes hum worse.

The audio sounds extremely over compressed to me. Might be the result of recording audio with their video camera together with its built in auto level control. Their glassy zoom, pan, and jib movements look impressive but I've gotten better audio results shooting with a cell phone.

It's a pretty lo-fi recording. Aside from the AC hum, there's quite a bit of harmonic distortion due to peak clipping. It's quite likely that the piano doesn't really sound like that at all... the recording is coloring it.

We should restrain from criticizing how bad the recording is as this is clearly a television program from some 30-40 years ago or an amazingly young looking 62-year-old Clayderman. There is no way to tell how many problems were introduced by the person who dusted off his 30-year-old VHS tape, ripped it into his computer and uploaded to YouTube.

It's a pretty lo-fi recording. Aside from the AC hum, there's quite a bit of harmonic distortion due to peak clipping. It's quite likely that the piano doesn't really sound like that at all... the recording is coloring it.

My thoughts exactly, although I might not have used the word, "coloring"! As most of us know, Yamahas are by design bright pianos, and this one may have been voiced even more so - but the audio quality on this clip is as bad as the video... so just as Philm said.